A Winnipeg businessman has received a telephone bill for more than $52,000 (Canadian) after unknown miscreants breached his voicemail system and made hundreds of calls to Bulgaria.
Alan Davison, told CBCNews he knew something was amiss when he saw a strange "feature 36" message repeatedly popping up on his phone. He evidently …

COMMENTS

Money back? It all depends

SO this guy wants his money back because he set up a weak password for onward transfers with his DX, Hmm! let me think NO!

Although if he bought the DX from the telecom vendor he gets service from he may have a case for inadequate security support.

And anyway what would any self respecting telecom company monitor your usage for spikes, that's how they make all that obscene profit. As a shareholder in several of these companies I can say the more dumb people like this the happier I am.

What I wanna know is..

He was stupid using an easy password but...

... the company allowed it. Which means they allowed potential breaches of their security system and so they should cough up. $52K is nothing compared to the poor public relations and custom they'll lose if they force him to pay by dragging him through the courts.

Re: Money back?

This guy doesn't want his money back, he wants MTS (long distance supplier) to cover SOME of the cost for not questioning the unusual traffic for 3 weeks.

Strange that banks will decline a transaction on any grounds but a telecoms company can see a bill that normally ranges from $15-$500 per month jump to $2k a day and not bat an eyelid. If I were in that situation I may have an expectation that the service provider would have taken slightly less than 3 weeks to question the massive rise in costs.

Then again, if my company also offered Cisco Unified Coms as a 'solution' then I may just have to console myself with slapping my forehead every 20secs or so.

@AC

Someone illegally used his telephone service to make calls. He may well have had poor security but that doesn't make it his fault or even ok to do something which amounts to stealing off him. If i leave my house unlocked , taking things from it is still stealing. I assume you wouln't complain if a locksmith open your house and took all your stuff, after all it's your fault for having lax security on your front door.

Saying he has to pay this bill is the same as saying if you get your creidt card skimmed your liable for the purchases made on it. Yes someone illegally used your card, but bad luck shouldn't have been lax enough to let someone steal your details.

The ubiquitous...

Re: Money back? It all depends

"And anyway what would any self respecting telecom company monitor your usage for spikes, that's how they make all that obscene profit."

They do monitor your usage. I'm a low usage business customer but have on occasion had large spikes in usage. On each occasion BT have contacted me to confirm that I am aware of the sudden high usage and that I should expect a large bill. On one occasion, because they could not contact me, they barred the phone from all but local calls until I contacted them to get the phone unbarred.

Oh, and its nothing to do with missing a bill payment as my bill is paid in full every quarter by direct debit.

who would monitor for spikes?

"And anyway what would any self respecting telecom company monitor your usage for spikes"

I used to work for a telecoms company that did.

Its a really good idea to do so. Firstly if your customer disputes their bill it isnt going to be settled and paid until the dispute is resolved. Secondly if the dispute goes against the telecoms company they get screwed with the bill especially when international calls are concerned. The traffic might be "free" on their own network but there are interconnect charges to be paid once the call transfers off to someone elses.

On teh other hand a sudden unseasonal drop in call volume can indicate a number of things including the posibility that they may be transfering to another provider without telling you or that they may be about to fold and go under. Both of these are really important to know if you want to get paid

That said. The guy is a dick. Did he not think to question what option 36 was?

Regulate the buggers

Where else do you run up a bill without any way of finding out what it is or setting a limit like "if it goes over xxx let me know". I'd sign up in a flash for a "warn me when the cost of a call goes over 5 pounds" option but this seems to be a case were giving the customer what they want isn't of any interest to the telcos.

Yes I got screwed once subletting a flat where the owners didn't have an international calling plan and we ended up paying $2/minute for calls for a couple of months until the owners bothered to forward a bill. One phonecall to switch the plan would have saved us a packet.

I see no reason why regulators shouldn't oblige them to offer free options like "text me if my monthly bill goes above twice the average" and the like.

Warning

I feel a bit sorry for this guy. Security issues aside, almost every telecomms billing system on the market has a "high spend" feature so it stands to reason that his provider would have known something was wrong. If they sold him this feature when he joined them, then he shouldn't have to pay...

Even better, he sold VOIP solutions!

The guy's company (from CBC News) was Hub Computer Solutions. One of the services they offer is VOIP solutions. They also offer "Security and Protection".

Great advertising -- "Yeah, VOIP is great. We use it in our office. Of course, last month we ended up getting a 50 grand telephone bill because somebody hacked it. But otherwise, it saves us lots of money."

Ya gotta wonder about some people. Paris because she knows all about getting her phone hacked...

I

I work for a company that got hit by this, and it's not necessarily about the victim being at fault for having bad security. Most people, even IT savvy ones, cannot understand telecoms systems, so they rely on specialists to set them up. In our case, that meant not being told that the function was active or that it still had the manufacturer's default password set. It was not a function that had been asked for or one that was wanted.

We found out after £15k had been run up in 48 hours. We were lucky in that as we're lawyers the telecoms company didn't argue too much about paying the bill, but not everyone has that clout.